• LaLiga: not hugging on goals, avoiding mobile and yoga, emotional keys to return

The Higher Sports Council has released this Saturday the protocol that will govern the return to training of professional and federated athletes from Monday. A text of minimums that the organizers of competitions or clubs may complete with the additional measures they deem appropriate and provided they do not contradict those set forth in this text, approved by the Ministry of Health .

As a general rule, the CSD "advises" that athletes be confined to their sports city or other facility (hotels, mainly) from the start of training in small groups until the end of the competition. In the case of professional soccer , this implies that the First and Second players could be concentrated away from their families for around two and a half months . Even more so for some clubs in the event that European competitions are resumed in August, as UEFA intends.

The drafting of this point gives carte blanche to organizers such as LaLiga to include in their protocols the obligation of such confinement, with regulated exceptions such as who is in charge of dependent persons. A measure that will bring queue, since the unions and sportsmen's associations have already positioned themselves radically against long confinements. "We will not confine ourselves. At most, a week before the competition begins, but not more," warn from AFE to this newspaper.

The protocol requires that concentrated players do so in individual rooms and only leave them to eat and train. The CSD is committed to helping to find alternatives to those clubs that do not have availability or resources to carry out these concentrations. Regarding competition matches, the CSD indicates that they will be, as a "general rule" behind closed doors, although it leaves the door open to the presence of the media.

Apart from this issue, the CSD protocol delimits collective training, so that more than 14 athletes will not be able to coincide at the same time on the same field of play and face-to-face technical meetings are prohibited. A transition period is established between that phase and the total start of the competition, so that team athletes must train all together for at least one week of their first match or competition. A minimum of four weeks must elapse from the start of individual training sessions until the start of the competition. In addition, even in the changing rooms they must keep a minimum distance of three meters between them. I mean, no hugs to celebrate a victory.

The CSD urges that physical therapy or sports massage treatments be limited to strictly essential cases (treatment of injuries, mainly), at least until the competition resumes. Likewise, the use of gyms should be avoided during the first two phases, the individual and small groups, to which the protocol does not set any limit of participants, contrary to what LaLiga does, which states that the groups will be of eight footballers maximum.

Regarding coronavirus tests , the protocol influences the well-known policy that they only be carried out under medical prescription , which in practice gives the clubs a free bar so that they are massive and discretionary. In fact, the LaLiga already has them scheduled in the 42 First and Second clubs that, as this newspaper announced, will move to the facilities of all of them between Tuesday and Thursday of next week.

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